On December 28, the U.S. Army took delivery of its second De Havilland Canada DHC-8 (LRR-E) aircraft modified to perform intelligence, surveillance & reconnaissance (ISR) missions for the Medium Altitude Reconnaissance and Surveillance System (PM MARSS) program.
According to the press release, the enhanced long-range radar reconnaissance (LRR-E) aircraft is capable of detecting moving targets using two distinct radar modes for moving target indications (MTI). One is Ground Moving Target Indicator (GMTI) able to find larger target types, such as vehicles, and the other is Dismounted Moving Target Indicator (DMTI), to focus on smaller targets, such as people.
“While scanning an area, the operator will see dots overlaid on a map that records the location of the target,” said Bryan Farley, LRR program leader for PM MARSS. “By indicating the radar cross section (RCS), the operator can determine the size of the target, its degree of reflection and its velocity.”
The LRR-E is also capable of using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), a radar-independent mode, which provides a three-dimensional representation of the radio frequency spectrum of the physical environment. This allows the operator to view the terrain through a radar lens, useful, for example, for mapping and reconnaissance missions.
The LRR-E system installed on the DHC-8s is based on the Vehicle and Dismounted Operating Radar (VADER). While the VADER uses a Ku-band radio frequency, the LRR-E uses an X-band frequency. This allows the LRR-E to produce much longer detection ranges than the VADER.
The first LRR-E system was delivered to the Army in April 2018 and a third system is expected to be delivered in mid to late 2022.
The US Army’s intelligence surveillance reconnaissance (ISR) DHC-8s are designed to provide timely, accurate, assured support to tactical forces of the full spectrum of operations. It provides a persistent capability to include broad-area surveillance and/or focused stare on target areas of interest (point or objective targets), electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR)/full-motion video (FMV), multi-mode radar, robust communications intelligence (COMINT), onboard collection, analysis, sensor cross cue, and dissemination through Distributed Common Ground System-Army (DCGS-A) enabled workstations.
Designed to be rapidly reconfigurable, allowing for five different sensor configurations, these DHC-8s provide the commander with the ability to customize the sensor package for specific missions as needed.
